BareBones Barbell Club of Tucson
Contact Us For: strength training, power lifting, Olympic Lifting, private coaching
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I often find this a little frustrating about you all, so I’m going to bring it to your attention: sometimes when you guys are asked to perform exercises like back extensions, controlled ring pushups, band-resisted lat pull downs, you often behave as though those things aren’t a “real workout”. From our perspective these are the things that improve your health, your gorgeousness and your performance waaayyy more than hundreds of burpee-pull ups and 400m runs. So adjust your thinking.
Next time you are doing a set of movements that does not seem “that hard” to you I want you to put it into a useful perspective: use Mike Tuscherer’s Rate of Perceived Exertion Scale.
“If you’re curious as to what RPE is, here’s the scale that we use:
10: Maximal, no reps left in the tank
9: Last rep is tough but still one rep left in the tank
8: Weight is too heavy to maintain fast bar speed but isn’t a struggle; 2–4 reps left
7: Weight moves quickly when maximal force is applied to the weight; “speed weight”
6: Light speed work; moves quickly with moderate force
5: Most warm-up weights
4: Recovery; usually 20 plus rep sets; not hard but intended to flush the muscle
An RPE below four isn’t important.”
Obviously, Tuscherer’s guide is for weight lifting, but it can easily be applied to bodyweight movements as well. If your sets of bodyweight movements are not approaching a 9 or a 10 RPE then you are sandbagging them. If you aren’t completely competent with the gymnastics skills then you need to put in a little more effort. Talk with your coach about your gymnastics sets and your gymnastics skill work using this RPE scale. And stop being so ADD, video-game generation about your training. Not everything can be like a ride on a roller coaster you know!!
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Get ready to register for the upcoming 4 week Olympic Lifting Series as well as your Summer Raw Strength Series. Registration will be up this week.
 Sunnyside Wrestlers doing their Morning Hard Work in the back alley. High school boys up early in the summer. WINNING!!
We’d like to welcome a bunch of new folks to the gym as well as say hellllooo and we miss you all to everyone who is at their non-Tucson home for the summer. You will have lots of new folks to get to know when you get back, some of whom will be nipping at your heels in your programming. I LOVE IT!!!
Last week was the finish of the Morning Blend, summer program. Yes, yes, I know it is still summer. Tomorrow morning you will blend yourselves back in to the Daily CrossFit programming. Daily CrossFit is in the midst of some true general physical preparedness-type stuff right now as well as a few testers in their near future, so we’d like to see all you early morning people get in on that. Happy Monday!! Same time though, 5:45am-6:45am.
Get your umbrellas out. I. See. Clouds.
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Sooo, I’m always pleading with you all to have goals for yourselves, however small or mundane or large and dreamy. Here is a suggestion for you: choose a movement such as a pullup or a knees to elbow. Dial in the strict version first, and then master the gymnastics (kipping) versions.
We provide a foundation for your progress with these goals with our two programs: Blueprint CrossFit and Daily CrossFit (culminating in Performance CrossFit). We know that your safety, ultimate success and improved fitness depends upon you developing a base of strength (muscles as well as tendons and connective tissue) that will support you in a faster, higher intensity training approach. In our Blueprint CrossFit Program the emphasis is on developing that base of strength and basic competence with the strict versions of common CrossFit movements. Strict pullups, strict ring rows, strict knees to elbows. Competence with these strict movements means that you have a great base of strength to keep you safe when you begin to cultivate your ability with the gymnastics movements. The gymnastics movements are fun to begin playing around with at any time, but for application in a CrossFit workout they should be reserved for people who have a solid base of strength. To remind you: if you don’t have the strength to do things like pullups and knees to elbows strictly you might get injured if you perform high repetitions of the gymnastics (kipped) versions. Also, you won’t get stronger by kipping these movements. You’ll get faster and more efficient at that particular movement, but you won’t make much progress with your strength. Watch Again Faster’s Head Coach teach CrossFit Games athlete James Hobart to kip. Notice that as James becomes better at the kipping motion he is using less strength and less effort. This is an excellent thing if your goal is to compete, but if your goal is fitness or strength and conditioning or getting in shape, always using the gymastics versions of the movements will not help you as much as becoming proficient with the stricter versions. If you are already proficient at these movements strictly, then check this out and begin working on your kip!!
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Holy Hot Weather!! The time for running outside during class is…let’s just say, not upon us right now. Time to get you all on the rowers instead. Many of you are new to a facility like ours, as well as the equipment that is in this facility, so it is my responsibility to educate y’all!!. In the next few days your rowers are getting all new screens and computers. However, here is what you all need to know about these machines:
1. They are the only technical “machine” we really have in this gym. They are more delicate than the other equipment we use. Dumb bells and bumper plates are pretty tough. Battle ropes, rings-practically indestructable. Expensive rowers-not so tough.
2. Unless you are Rich Froning about to set some type of CrossFit world record you have not earned the right to be rough with these Rowers. Taking 7 seconds off your workout time because you let the handle slam back in IS NOT WORTH an $800 rower!!!!
3. Those black spots on the screens that obstruct your view of your distance and pace are caused by treating the rowers too roughly. When you move them, take them down, or put them away you MUST DO SO GENTLY. When you bang them, drag them over the edge of the mats, or let the handle smash in, it f***s up the screens.
4. When you are finished rowing, the proper place to store the handle is all the way in, not in the little handle catcher. Letting the handle all the way in to the neck of the rowers takes the tension off the chain and associated machinery which is important. Handles on the rowers should NOT BE FOUND in the catcher. That is only for during a workout.
5. If you treat the rowers inappropriately by accident or from true forgetfulness get ready for a little burpee penalty. If you do so out of a temper at your bad workout, get ready to purchase replacement parts.
Get ready to row.
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As always, plenty of excitement at the CrossFit Games Regional Qualifiers! As a part of our Regional Wrap Up, I want to especially thank our Running Works coach Chris Childs who held down the fort with you all at home, while we were in Salt Lake City. Thank you also to all of you for keeping track of the schedule changes. Everything will be back to normal soon!
 Thanks to Kim C. for some great pictures of our final workout!!
Your CrossFit Works Team finished 13th this weekend. This was their first multi-day competition together. It was Garrett’s first Regional competition. It was truly a Team situation this year with each of the members doing their pieces of the puzzle just like they practised. The SouthWest Region is home of Hack’s Pack from Ute CrossFit – winners of last year’s CrossFit Games Affiliate Cup, so we get to be up against the best of the best. As always, in the early hours and days after an athletic event, it is easy to look back and look ahead and see all that needs to be done and all that there is to work on for next time, but our entire community should spend at least some time celebrating the idea that out of the hundreds of teams in the SouthWest Region to begin the Open, your Crew finished 13th. Man, that is a HUGE accomplishment!
Chris, as always, competes against some CrossFit SuperStars, like last year’s second place CrossFit Games athlete Matt Chan. For Chris, in his years-long process of training to be a top-level CrossFitter, this competition was one more step in the journey. Success, challenge, knowledge, experience, accomplishment.
Many of you have been following us this weekend, so you know that Leslie’s Regional ended with Day 1. I’m going to take a little time to reflect on this because, well, my perspective on Leslie’s choices, performance and future is one that I’d like you all to understand. In case you weren’t following, Leslie chose to open her overhead squat ladder at 155lbs. She was required to accomplish 3 reps at that weight in order to remain in the competition. Leslie’s judge determined that her range of motion on her lifts was unsatisfactory. In the 7 minute time, Leslie was not able to perform her lifts to her judge’s satisfaction. There are so many ways to respond to what happened, and the most knee jerk of them, no matter how well-intentioned, I think, miss the mark.
First of all, strict judging is incredibly important. The future reputation of the CrossFit Games depends on it. All sports have referees/judges of some sort and they all are human. We must respect and uphold the system. As athletes, we all, over the course of our competitive lives, will get a call that is not in our favor. Part and parcel of competing. Train like you have the strictest judge.
Second of all, I don’t look at this as some kind of “lesson” for Leslie. In fact, if Leslie walks away from this competition as a fearful timid competitor I will be extremely disappointed in her. Each athlete has to find their way. They have to bring their own personality and perspective on the world to their performance. Leslie is a powerful personality. She is brave and courageous. She is passionate and hungry. She likes a challenge, and all year we have worked so hard on her mental game, on her ability to face a challenge and charge it down. These are the qualities that will fuel Leslie’s success as an athlete. Leslie did not train as hard as she did to come and finish in the bottom of the pack. She trained to be aggressive and to find her utmost potential. She did not come to Salt Lake City to be conservative and go through the motions and be 27th out 30. Opening at 155lbs was a small risk. It was a risk, but not a crazy one. It was a measured risk. Leslie is not fearful. Leslie is an athlete that can handle measured risk. This time, the risk didn’t go her way.
Taking that risk, from my perspective, was a sign of successful training and preparation for Leslie. She felt confident, and she was courageous. Those are two qualitites she has worked hard to develop. Perhaps next time she will take less of a chance, perhaps next time she will be more conservative. I hope not actually. Here is what I know about Leslie: had she been more conservative, opened with the lower weight, and finished the weekend in the lower rankings, she would have said to me “You know, I should have opened with the 155lbs. I could have gotten it, and I would have been in 10th place. I’m really mad I didn’t go with the 155lbs”. Leslie has to be true to herself. Of course this weekend was a learning experience for Leslie, but I hope the experience makes her hungry to triumph next time instead of making her fearful or timid.
All of us here in Salt Lake City, are so grateful for the support of all our community. You will have a chance to purchase your own, limited edition, 2013 Regional CrossFit Works Team shirts this week!! All your athletes are magnificent people and incredible competitors. We will be back to work with you all in just a few days!
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We are in that crazy busy time of year for all CrossFit gyms. The 2013 CrossFit Games Regional qualifying workouts are upon us! This means, like all gyms with a focus on performance, we will be down-scheduling a bit while we are away. Read carefully for the details:
Monday, May 27 Memorial Day – we will host one special workout at 10:00am.
This workout will be appropriate for all of you (and in answer to several concerned folks…no, you are not doing “Murph”). So, the gym will be closed all day except for the workout at 10:00am and also, Size Matters will be at the normal time on that Monday. So, yes Size Matters will train on Memorial Day, normal time, 7:30pm.
Beginning on Thursday May 30th we will have a few changes in place:
Thursday May 30th
Open Gym 10:30am to 1:00pm
Ladies Only 4pm-5pm
The 5:30pm class is cancelled, so that Mark can run a class at 5:00pm and 6:15pm. The programming has been adjusted so that these two workouts will be appropriate for ALL OF YOU. So, Mark’s 5:30pm class should either come at 5pm or 6:15pm on Thursday May 30th.
Size Matters will take place as normally scheduled on Thursday.
Friday May 31
The gym will have a normal morning schedule through the 9am class. The gym will close after the 9am class and will remain closed for the rest of the day. If you want to train on Friday the 31, come in the morning at 5:45, 7am or 9am!!
Saturday June 1st
CrossFit Football is cancelled, but there will be Open Gym from 9:30am to noon.
Sunday June 2nd
Closed as always
Monday June 3rd – everything back to normal!!
Follow our facebook pages and the CrossFit Games website to track your athletes in Salt Lake City!!
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Before we resume our discussion of the effect of your mood on lifting, I want to say Good Luck to our Team this weekend. Our Regional Team will throw down for their Mock Regional beginning tomorrow. After that begins their tapering until we leave for Salt Lake City!!
 A few of the ladies of the 9am on Taylor’s last day. They’ve been staying after class and working on their relationship with the barbell too!!
Also, we wish Taylar Stallings to CRUSH IT at the South Central CrossFit Games Regional this weekend!! Chris is with her now. Check our facebook for updates.
Last week we talked about the physiologic gender differences that occur in response to anger and stress and how those play out in a weight lifting environment. Basically, the conclusion last week was that getting angry creates physiologic responses that potentially benefit men in the weight room and are not so effective for women. Today I want to talk about when it is time to call on that anger, when it might be detrimental and what it means for women.
What I have observed in many novice male lifters is that too much emotion is actually a problem. When you have not built a mind body connection that is so powerful that each and every time you walk up to the bar for a deadlift, your body knows exactly how to perform the movement correctly, then you need to keep your intellect engaged. Until you have performed thousands of reps, you need to focus on technique. In novice lifters there is a back and forth, give and take, between your pure strength and your technique. For a period of time, brute strength will set new PRs for you. Then you fix technique, then you get a little stronger and so on and so forth. At any moment in that cycle, if your technique is terrible, it will be an insurmountable stumbling block. Getting all hyped up to clean, and then, doing it like an 8th grade football player is not a winning combination. You would be much better served to set emotion aside and keep your brain turned on and listen to your coach. The older, more experienced lifters know that if they get intense too soon, they dump a huge amount of energy and hormones and then when it is time to lift they are drained. I love going to meets and observing the difference between young lifters and the older, more accomplished lifters. The more experienced lifters know when to time that intensity. They don’t waste it and more importantly, it comes second or third to their technique and their long years of getting stronger. Yes, getting angry or intense helps them with the lift, but it is the icing on the cake baked of technique and slog in the weight room.
For you younger, less experienced lifters, especially those of you who are gaining exposure to these movements via CrossFit, your technique is going to be your stairway to PRs, not your emotion.
For women, we have to look at this in a slightly different light. Rather than combating our inherent instinct to get wound up and mad at the barbell, we have to figure out how to feel dominant. For the most part, novice female lifters are quite technique-focused, a bit more nervous about getting injured and less aggressive and confident with the barbell. These are all amazingly beneficial qualities early on in your lifting career, but the fact is, a relationship with a barbell is not really built of communication and cooperation. That thing is cold, hard iron. It doesn’t care or know how you are feeling. You’ve got to take control and dominate it or it will dominate you. It won’t help to talk to it or about it. Don’t give it any power. Give it respect, but make it yours. As women, I don’t think getting angry at the barbell is quite the answer. The answer is for us to cultivate whatever makes us feel most powerful. Anger for women, often makes us feel powerless and at the mercy of something bad happening. Instead, think about what makes you feel powerful? What makes you feel like you are in charge of your destiny? That is how you want to step up to your barbell. No fear, no stress, no concern, no anxiety. Ultimate confidence, even if you are faking it, is how you want to step up to the barbell.
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Part II of Barbells and Anger, coming next!
 Sending them off in style…
Part of the reality of being a CrossFit facility in a University town with plenty of young amazing athletes is that we lose them when they move on from this University. It is our luck to have you during this brief time you spend in Tucson. We have so many of you moving on to your first jobs, marriages in new cities and grad school!! Luckily for us some of you who are also graduating this week are staying put for a bit, but for those of you leaving our desert paradise, from the CrossFit Works Team, WE WISH YOU ALL THE BEST IN YOUR NEW ADVENTURES!!
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Merry Monday everyone! A couple reminders: this is the final week to sign up for our lean mass gain program “Size Matters”. You begin May 13. Also May 13 begins our summer Morning Blend class at 5:45am M W F.
This will be a 2-part post:
Our coaching staff had a little talk about the role of emotion in training last week. Variations on this topic are a common theme in a gym where performance athletes hone their skills and where people come every day to have their personal limits tested. Today, I want to talk about a specific type of emotion that people often think is beneficial to their performance especially in weight lifting. I think we can all agree that there are emotions that can be our enemy for performance especially fear. There is a sense though, usually among men, that weight lifting is best done with a high degree of emotion, especially anger. If I had a dollar for every man in the weight room who has told me to “get mad” I’d be rich. The origins of this “getting mad at the barbell will get the weight up” theory are legitimate. It is generally understood that people have a fight-or-flight response as part of our survival mechanism. Adrenaline is one of the stress hormones that triggers us to stay and fight or turn and flee…oorrrrr, if you are a woman it triggers you to “tend and befriend”. Whaaat?? Am I really saying that women don’t have a “fight or flight” reaction? Kind of.
Some of the early research initiated partly by the work and theories of physiologist Walter Cannon in the 1930s on the release of catecholamines (stress hormones) indicated that all humans and animals had a similar physiologic response to stress: increased heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. Alas, as in many areas of research, men were the primary subjects of study. New research conducted since 2000 is suggesting that physiologic responses to stress are actually gender-determined. In fact, a recent Australian study identified the SRY gene (the gene formerly known only for it’s role in developing male genitalia in-utero) as a gene responsible for the release of the catecholamine hormones that turn on the increased heart rate and blood pressure in men as a stress response. Women obviously do not possess this SRY gene and as a result, we respond to stress differently. Most of the primate and human studies on the female stress response have clearly described that in response to stress females excrete endorphins and oxytocin-the hormones that cause kind and loving social responses to children and the other members of our social realm. In other words, the female stress hormones trigger “tend and befriend”. Two male rhesus monkeys under stress will fight each other to the death, two females under stress will groom each other. Now, physiology is never simple-females also have those same sympathetic nervous system responses to stress that men have like increased heart rate, but at differing levels and moderated by the release of “feel good” endorphins.
OK-so basically, in response to a strong emotion like anger, men release that flood of hormones, including testosterone that basically power them up. For women it is not such a powerful response. If one of you guys gets yourself all riled up by yelling and listening to SlipKnot and having your girlfriend slap you a few times, you will be “stronger”. Ammonia capsules have the same effect without the emotion. If I get ready to lift and someone slaps me, my body releases hormones that trigger me to think about sitting down with you and asking you why you did that. Not so helpful!! What would be helpful for us women, is obviously to experience that increased blood flow and heart rate-to get a burst of strength, but yelling and slapping and getting angry actually may not be the best way for us. Over the last five years I have watched many women in the weight room receive the instruction to “get angry at the bar” – I almost always see the same sort of puzzled look on their faces. Maybe what the Man-With-The-Advice means to say is “release adrenaline, get your heart rate up, spike your blood pressure”. The problem is getting angry may not be the way to make that happen for us. As women we might have to forge our own path on this one. I know that if I listen to music that makes me feel upbeat, if I concentrate hard on seeing myself do the lift, if I take a few short fast breaths and squeeze the barbell as hard as I can, I can make my heart rate go up and I can absolutely feel the adrenaline surge. In contrast, if I am angry my brain is so unfocused that lifting something heavy is the last thing I should attempt. In response to anger I simply don’t want to “fight the barbell”, I just want to not feel angry. In fact, I know if I lift when my mind is clouded by emotion I will screw up and get hurt.
In the second part of this post I will talk about how the reckless application of emotion can also be detrimental to men in their lifting and how the lack of aggression can be detrimental to women in their lifting. We’ll talk ways that men and women can manipulate these gender differences to their best advantage.
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It seriously takes a lot to get me riled up these days. A decade ago pretty much anything could get me fired up about all the outrageous hypocrisy in the world, but I’m a bit more mellow these days (yes, many people are grateful)!! Occasionally, when you all put your empty water bottles in the trash can that says “no water bottles” I do get a bit worked up. But this morning…this morning…I felt that old friend of mine, outrage at injustice and wrongness, lodge itself in my heart. Everyone has their thing that touches them in their soul and inspires them to action-things like animal cruelty, child abuse, chemical weapons, or bad fashion choices (I’m actually pretty serious here, unfortunately). My thing, not surprisingly, has to do with food and the availability of nutritious food to everyone who needs it. This is my work, my passion. It is the reason CrossFit Works exists (sometimes paths are long and winding…).
 Teaching the art and science of lacto-fermentation in 2006 at a local farm in New Hampshire
This morning, at my nearby Whole Foods, I stopped on my way home from the gym to grab a jar of saurkraut to go with my eggs. Saurkraut and eggs are my most common breakfast. It is the only food I push my kids HARD to take a few bites of each day even though they don’t like it. It is the one food I wish all of you ate every day. Saurkraut is athletic performance food par excellence. It keeps your digestive system, beat down by intense training, healthy with the right microorganisms, so you can absorb nutrients. You can read more about why I like saurkraut here: Six Healthiest Foods.
I rotate the brands I purchase (when I haven’t made my own) because I like to try new things and I enjoy the subtle variety of flavors and textures of the various saurkrauts. On the shelf was a large jar of organic saurkraut I had never seen before. I was intrigued until I saw the price: $21.99!!!!! I was speechless. I hope it was a typo but I doubt it.
I consider selling a jar of saurkraut for that much money to be a perpetration of political food injustice. This might surprise you as some of you have been subject to my speeches on why good eggs should cost $6 a dozen or why a gallon of raw milk should cost $15. The cost of food should represent the cost of producing that food in a sustainable manner. Cheap food is not sustainable. It’s a trick. A bad trick. However, the beauty of saurkraut is that it is amazingly nutritious and cheap. It’s like the bones, the feet and the Spam of the animal world. Cheap but powerful. Saurkraut is to organic hot-house tomatoes as liver is to a local grass-fed, organic, aged steak. Liver and saurkraut are more nutritious than fancy tomatoes or steak and a hell of a lot cheaper.
Cabbage is peasant food, cheap food, a gift to those of us who want to nourish our bodies and our families the best we can when we don’t have much money. Cabbage is powerfully nutritious and, cooked properly with dill, sunflower seeds, or browned onions, it tastes good too. Even an organic cabbage is only a few dollars. Saurkraut is chopped cabbage and salt and water. One jar of saurkraut is not even an entire cabbage. How the hell can a jar of saurkraut cost nearly $22?!?!?! Real Saurkraut is ALWAYS gluten-free, ALWAYS raw, ALWAYS a good source of probiotics, and for a dollar or so more, organic. There is nothing that can be done to saurkraut, barring sprinkling it with gold dust, to make it cost $22.
I have been teaching families, athletes and sick people about lacto-fermented foods for many years. I’ve taught people to make their own. I advocate this food as one of the cheapest, most important sources of nutrition. I cannot bear the thought of anyone thinking that a jar of saurkraut is expensive. If you’d like to make your own (pennies a jar full) ask me and I will teach you. If you’d like to purchase a jar that is perfectly lovely, go with the 25oz jar of Bubbies for about $5 or $6. Tell the world, no one should charge $22 for a jar of cabbage. Go get yourself some saurkraut, you’ll be a better athlete, and if you are interested in these sorts of issues read “The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved” by Sandor Katz.
 Gallons of kimchi, a spicy Korean lacto-fermented vegetables, less than a couple dollars a jar: raw, organic, local, hand made
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We hate it when you get stuck in ruts. Change is good. You adapt, you grow, you get better. A few of us got together and designed a new morning class for you called The Morning Blend. The Morning Blend is going to be a “hard work” workout. The influences for The Morning Blend programming were Doug’s military background, Andrew’s fire department training and my desire to see you guys do something new and different. We wanted to see more partner work, more team work, more “figure it out”-type tasks, more real-life movements, more carrying, moving, cooperating. Excellent traditional CrossFit programming like you will find in our Blueprint or Daily CrossFit classes is characterized by being timed and measured. Excellent traditional CrossFit programming improves your efficacy with the common suite of CrossFit movements – you learn to string together knees-to-elbows, to hang power clean, to swing a kettle bell. Sometimes you guys are great with those common CrossFit movements, but when asked to flip a tire or swing a sledge or do a Turkish Get Up with a slam ball, you fall to bits. You will learn to be an efficient “worker” in The Morning Blend, and you will get better at moving your body in relation to all kinds of objects, not just the common CrossFit implements. Sometimes the presence of the clock or the rep scheme subversively influences you guys to rush and short change movements, or choose a scaled version of the movement that is too scaled. Sometimes it should just be something like-”here is the work to be done. Get it done.”
 WORK
Here are the logistic details: The Morning Blend class will replace the 5:30am and 6:00am classes for the Summer Season, through mid-August. Class will now begin Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:45am. Class will begin with the Conditioning portion of the workout. The Conditioning portion will be finished by 6:20, so that you can either stretch and head to work or move on to your strength work. The strength work will be the same strength work that the Daily CrossFit class is doing. Performing your strength work after your conditioning work will be a new type of stressor for you all to adapt to since you are accustomed to doing your strength work prior to your conditioning work. Doug will be your fearless leader. Summer is for special fun. This is your Summer Special. Enjoy it!
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 By popular request we are offering a Summer Version of our “Size Matters” mass gain program.
The Size Matters Program is a 12 week mass-gain, hypertrophy program, designed to increase lean muscle mass. It is designed to meet the needs of two different groups: one group will be a typical, mass-gain, hypertrophy group, the other will be a little more focused on the nutrition changes involved in leaning out and getting cut while adding muscle. Regardless of your particular focus, both groups will participate in the final 3 week leaning out phase. Before and after photos are highly encouraged, but not required. This program is not only for guys. I highly highly suggest this 12 week program for all women who would like to increase their upper body strength and develop firm, tight arms, backs, legs, abs and butts. The nutrition portion of the Size Matters program will be absolutely applicable to all women who want to get lean muscles.
Size Matters will run from May 13 to August 3, for a total of 12 weeks.
Meet times will be Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 7:30-9pm. There will also be an additional homework day for everyone on the weekend.
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Weekends are for trail runs with Running Works, squatting heavy and cooking! I’m getting a lot of questions again recently about supplements. My answer is always that you should start with food. I had a special incentive for using real food to recover from Saturday’s marathon of squats, pause squats and a 40rep highbar back squat set at 100lbs. This special incentive was that I am realllly sore and no amount of powders and potions is gonna make it better. What do we need for recovery? We need protein, carbs, minerals and gelatin for cartilage construction, tissue repair building and gut healing. This calls for the good stuff…ok, also I was really getting behind with my magnificent herbs and greens from Urban Desert Garden! So I made a
40rep Squat Soup of Greens
1 liter of chicken stock
2lbs of bulk chicken sausage
10 whole cloves garlic, peeled
3 small organic carrots, scrubbed, in chunks
1 bunch Urban Desert Garden Kale
1 bunch Urban Desert Garden Chard
1 bunch Urban Desert Garden parsely
1 bunch Urban Desert Garden dill, snipped with scissors into bits
2 organic white potatoes, scrubbed and cut into tiny little cubes
2 spoonfuls Dr. Bernard Jensen’s Gelatin
I did a few special things with this soup to maximize it’s ability to help me walk normally tomorrow. First, recall the benefits and drawbacks of cooked vs raw for particular foods. Kale is a member of the cruciferous vegetable family. These nutritional powerhouses have goitrogens (thyroid-inhibitors) which are ameliorated with cooking. Traditional wisdom advises cooking the crucifers because of this issue. Parsley is one of the best sources of Vitamin C hands down. Vitamin C is a heat-sensitive nutrient so cooking parsely is not a good idea. With this soup it is possible to combine cooking and raw veg techniques to make the most of the vegetables. The white potatoes are optional. I cook for two adolescent boys who are growing like crazy, and a member of the Haight-Ashbury generation who forgets to eat enough sometimes, so I often add a little bit more simple carbohydrates to the meals. If you are not desirous of the potatoes you can leave them out, or add a handful of rice if you’d prefer rice to potato. If I had recently roasted a chicken I wouldn’t have used the Jensen’s gelatin I would have used the gelatin out of the roasting pan, but I use more gelatin than I can keep up with from chickens.
Brown the chicken sausage in a heavy bottom skillet. Reserve a few spoonfuls of the fat. In a sturdy soup pot add the spoonfuls of the cooking fat from the chicken sausage. Add 10 whole garlic cloves and the pieces of carrot. Saute until the cloves of garlic begin to brown. Add the bunch of clean kale and the clean chard, leave it dripping from the wash water. I didn’t chop it at all. Cover the pot and let the greens steam for about 7min, stir a few times so they don’t burn. Turn the heat off and pour some cold chicken stock into your blender. I caution you that I use a Vita-Mix which would blend anything, so you might have to do smaller batches if your blender is less powerful. Remember to be careful when blending hot liquids. Put a towel over the blender. Blend 3/4 of the chicken stock with all those cooked vegetables into a perfectly smooth puree. Add the entire bunch of parsely. Puree again until smooth. Set aside.
Pour the rest of your chicken stock into the soup pot and bring to a boil. Add your tiny little potato cubes. Simmer for about 10min until they are soft. Add the chicken sausage and the gelatin. Pour in your green puree carefully. Turn the heat off, cover. This allows the soup to reheat through, but not cooking the parsley. Stir in the snipped dill. You might want some sea salt and pepper. Eat.
Now check this out-I analyzed the nutritional profile of the soup in a nutrition data calculator. Very very impressive.
Nutrient Profile of 40rep Squat Soup of Greens
In a 2c serving (most grown men would eat 3-4 cups, so double the data below):
6g fat
18g carbs
16g protein
200 Calories
600% Vitamin K
176% Vitamin A
98% Vitamin C (same as an orange)
14% Iron (same as 4oz sirloin)
15% Magnesium
27% potassium (more than a banana)
11% Zinc
Vitamin B6 35% (this is one of the primary components of the Sports Supplement ZMA)
Niacin 27%
8% Calcium
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Don’t forget this Saturday, CFFB is meeting at Himmel Park!
We have a guest blog post this morning from Doug, the coach of our 6am class. Doug and I are working on a special summer morning program that will begin in midday May, so stay tuned!
 6am working on snatch progressions
“Why do I love my job? It’s not because I get to see people lose fat and put on muscle, although that’s part of it. It’s not because I get to hang out with awesome people who love to lift, although that’s part of it too. I love my job because I get to watch people face a seemingly impossible task and accomplish it. Sometimes the initial exposure to the task and completion of the task are months apart, but the latter has so far always occurred. I have been coaching now for less than 6 months. When I first came to Crossfit Works I began teaching my morning class how to string together pull-ups. I remember saying jokingly “You guys are doing great! You’re going to do Fran next week at this rate!” We all laughed together because we knew at that point, all the pull-ups and thrusters could not be complete as prescribed. Over the last few months I have seen those same clients labor and toil and scratch and claw to string together pull-ups (as well as become comfortable with many other movements). On Monday, the workout was supposed to be 13.5. Connor had already done it and said he wanted to do Fran (like a boss). I encouraged the two others who had already done 13.5 to give Fran a go with the prescribed weight and pull-ups. They reluctantly acquiesced. Several minutes later some of our athletes completed their very first rx’d Fran. Sure, Graham Holmberg and Rich Froning could have done two or three Frans by the time it was said and done. But it was completed, from beginning to end. What was a joke, and a physical impossibility four months ago has now become nothing more than several very unpleasant minutes.
I hope that all of the Crossfit Works athletes take a little time this week to look back over the last four to six months and look at where they were and where they are now. There is always going to be something that seems impossible. Just remember that impossible doesn’t mean something you can’t do. It means something you can’t do YET.”
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